Writers' Chasm

Me: Hope everyone had a great holiday and an awesome weekend! :) This week I have the MC of Aliens Ruined My Life, Katie, with us. Say hello, Katie. Katie: Hello, Katie. Me: *rolls eyes* Katie why don't you tell us about yourself? Katie: Before or after the invasion? Me: After. That is when your story starts. Katie: Not really. Maybe you should write another one. A prequel. Me: Maybe next year for nano. I'm kind of tempted to write Illiandora's story. Don't you think that would be cool? Katie: Maybe you should explain who Illiandora is. Me: I'm the interviewer here. Now, why don't you tell us about yourself after the invasion. Katie: Well, I have brown hair and brown eyes. My hair is kind of wavy at the ends. I don't like to be interrupted when I'm reading and I like to be sarcastic sometimes. Me: Sometimes? Katie: Hey, every character has some part of their writer in them. Unlike most people, I don't mind homework as long as it's not a pile of p...

Once again, no formal post today. If you absolutely must go out and brave the throngs of insane people battling over the products for sale, be safe and good luck! I don't want to hear of any deaths like last year. If you're sane and staying home -- like me -- enjoy your day off and get to work on that NaNo project! Either way, everyone have an awesome weekend!

It's something that a lot of new writers obsess over though it doesn't have a lot of bearing on a story. I've read books with everything from one to two page chapters (which got a little annoying after awhile, but it was easy to keep track of how many chapters I was reading and keep myself from losing track of time) to books that only had ten chapters and 384 pages. Does it really matter what your chapter's length is? No. In fact, it can vary. You can have chapters that are a few pages long and other chapters that are ten or fifteen. Just do whatever works for your book. Because I'm curious, here's a cute little poll. When reading (or writing) what chapter length do you prefer? What chapter length do you prefer? Very short (1-3 pages) Short (4-7 pages) Medium (7-10 pages) Long (10-15 pages) Very long (15+ pages) No preference Web Polls

Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers Cracked Up to Be is an amazing book. For the first ten minutes after I finished it, all I could think was wow. The characterization was just amazing. Parker is probably one of the first characters that I wanted to strangle and hug at the same time, without being able to put the book down. She's such a witch to everyone around her -- even those that are just trying to help -- but you just want to keep going to figure out what made her like this. And Jake...I love him! He's such a sweetheart and you just have to love him. I love the way that Courtney Summers reveals the events of the party that made Parker the way she is by showing it in bits as Parker remembers and thinks about it. Note: don't read Cracked Up to Be during NaNo. Or when you're supposed to be working on something. It was really hard for me to put it down.

Okay, I planned to do this...12 days ago on Destiny's actual one-year birthday, but that's when everything hit me so happy belated birthday, Destiny! *cue noise-makers* In celebration of this event, I'm going to interview the two main characters, Claudia and Erik. Hello guys! Claudia and Erik: Hello! Claudia: Thanks for having us. Me: You're welcome. You're always welcome around here. Being my first characters and all. Erik: I thought that was Fluffy. Me: Shut up. Stories that I wrote when I was six don't count. Claudia: Aww, but Fluffy was so cute. Me: *rolls eyes* All right, let's get started. Selma: *walks in without knocking* Am I late? Me: Selma, this is an interview between me, Claudia, and Erik. I was planning on having yours in celebration of the one year anniversary of Destiny's completion. Selma: Too bad. Besides, you don't even know what day that is. Me: All right, you can stay. You didn't tell anyone else, did you? Selma: *looks guilt...

Okay. I've got every post planned through December 14th. So hopefully there will be no more missed days (except for the weekends, because I take those off blogging.) The laptop is supposed to be back by the 14th so I figured I'd plan through then and see where I stood. Yesterday I printed the first chapter of Destiny. It's one of the coolest things in the world to hold your own manuscript in your hands, even if it's just a fraction of it. But besides the coolness-factor, there are other reasons to print out your manuscript. 1. It's a great way to edit. I don't suggest doing this with a first draft unless you can afford to buy a few cartridges of ink (if you have a printer like mine that sucks up ink faster than a jet sucks up fuel) and a package of paper because a first draft is definitely going to have a lot of things that need to be fixed. Better to fix all those errors and do all those rewrites on the computer and save the printing for a later draft. 2. Hard ...

I have returned! And this time I have a little more time on my hands. No, the laptop still isn't back. It'll be two weeks this Saturday. But I AM finished with NaNo!! That's right, Aliens Ruined My Life is complete at 50,300 words! If you ask me how the heck I did it, the answer is: sugar, a character that wouldn't shut up, and a willingness to put everything else aside and just sit in the house for an entire weekend (probably the last beautiful, slightly warm weekend we're going to get until April) and write. I've started editing Destiny, Jump, and ARML with the goal to finish all three of them before Christmas break. I'll ship them out to betas and then hopefully start working on my next project over break. I'm taking tonight off, but tomorrow I'll get my butt in gear and start editing. I've already got the first chapter of Destiny printed out with a list of revision suggestions in front of me. I'm also going to try to be a better blogger a...

I HATE having only one computer. You do not truly appreciate your computer time until your computer disappears and you have to share with your writer mom. Trust me on this. One week survived, two to three to go. And the worst part is, I still don't have my backup files. Which means I can't turn in that AP Lit essay (which means I'm probably failing right now, but I'm too scared to check my grades to see), I don't have my notes for the book reviews I had planned, and I don't have the first 10k of my nano project. *sighs* Anyway...a few random notes before I begin. I finished Bloodhound. Review will come eventually. I've started Sucks to be Me. There will definitely be a review on this one. :D I hit the halfway point on ARML. YAY! Goal is to hit 35k this weekend. Only 16 days left! Taylor Swift won Entertainer of the Year at the CMAs the other day, a title that is usually given to Kenny Chesney if I remember correctly. I am so happy for her and ecstatic right ...

Before I begin, I'd like to say sorry for being such a horrible blogger in the past week. I realize that it's been...almost two weeks since I last posted. I'm so very sorry! Life decided to get in the way and make blogging nearly impossible. So I've decided to drop in and let you all know what's up. School and homework has been taking up the majority of my time. We're nearing the end of the trimester which means teachers are now piling even more work on us in an attempt to get through all their lessons before exams. At this point our trig teacher has already told us that we're not going to have any time for review in class before our exams. Which sucks. Whatever time I don't spend working on homework, is spent writing. NaNo is very time consuming, but I'm quite happy with my project so far. Yesterday my laptop broke and it's now in the shop. I think I have a vague idea how parents feel when they're children go away to summer camp. Everything ...